China · Fujian
Where to Stay in Longyan, Fujian
Where to stay in Longyan
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Where you stay in Longyan turns on the city or the tulou. The city centre keeps the shops, the stations, and the markets within reach, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the city. The hills close in around the streets.
Rooms sit among the valley blocks. Out toward Yongding and the earthen houses, the land opens into green Hakka country. A room by the tulou trades the centre for the roundhouses, the terraces, and the quiet of the hills.
The wooded ranges rise past the edge. If you want the shops and the stations, stay downtown; if you want the tulou, take a room out by Yongding. Either way, the hills are close at hand.
About Longyan
Longyan is the Hakka city of the earthen roundhouses.
What is Longyan known for?
In the green mountains of western Fujian the Hakka people built the famous tulou, huge round and square houses of rammed earth where whole clans lived behind thick walls, and the old Hakka town of Tingzhou keeps its ancient ramparts nearby. Tea and tobacco grow on the hills. Roundhouses and mountains mark the city.
What are the main landmarks in Longyan?
The great tulou rise in the valleys of Longyan. The huge round houses of rammed earth, whole villages under one roof, stand among the hills, the emblem of the region, in the Hakka country. An old walled town lies nearby.
Tingzhou keeps its ancient stone ramparts by the river, while the tulou clusters of Yongding draw crowds to the earthen giants around Longyan.
What is the history of Longyan?
Longyan is a land the Hakka made their own. Long ago the Hakka, wanderers from the north, settled these western Fujian hills, far from the coast and its people, and they built their homes to guard against bandits and strangers. They raised great houses of earth.
The Hakka packed walls of rammed earth into vast round and square tulou, four storeys high, where a whole clan could live and shelter behind one gate. The old town of Tingzhou held the hills for centuries. On the river Tingzhou grew as the Hakka capital, ringed by stone walls, a market and a seat of learning for the mountain country.
The hills saw hard fighting later on. In the last century the red armies gathered in these valleys, and the Gutian meeting here shaped their cause, so the region is dotted with revolutionary sites. The tulou still stand in the valleys.
Longyan keeps its roundhouses and its Hakka ways in the hills.
Where is Longyan?
Longyan lies in the mountains of western Fujian in southeastern China. The city spreads through green hills and river valleys of red earth, far from the coast, near the borders with Guangdong and Jiangxi. Wooded ranges rise all around.
The rivers wind down through the valleys.
What is the climate of Longyan?
The hills around Longyan hold a humid subtropical climate, warm the year round. Hot, wet summers and mild winters cross the hills, and heavy rains fall in the summer months, often wrapped in mountain mist, while the winters stay soft. Fog fills the valleys at dawn.
The green hills stay warm and wet.
How do you get to Longyan?
Longyan lies in the mountains of western Fujian, inland from the coast. High-speed trains and the expressway run to it from Xiamen and the coast through the hills, and roads reach the tulou villages of Yongding. Local buses carry on into the tulou villages and the hill towns.
Most arrive by rail from Xiamen.
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Updated August 2026